Blog

The journal NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin is currently running a series of articles about university collections and museums. These articles raise a number of interesting issues, which are otherwise rarely brought up in discussions about the historiography of science, technology, and medicine. In nr 4/2008, Anke te Heesen (Tübingen) pointed […]

Kvarteret omkring Medicinsk Museion er påfaldende mere befolket for tiden. Hver formiddag inden kl. 11 kan man se en lang kø af menneske stillet op i Amaliegade, og årsagen er naturligvis fremvisningen af kronprinsparrets nyistandsatte bolig: Frederik VIIs palæ på Amalienborg. I den forbindelse vil jeg komme med et lille forslag. Har man efter endt […]

Measured by the number of incoming emails and RSS-feeds, the big news in the science museum world today is a critical article by Edward Rothstein (“The Thrill of Science, Tamed by Agendas”) in the Arts Special section of yesterday’s New York Times. A century ago, Rothstein points out, museums were simply collections of objects: “And science […]

We have had our first drawing workshop here at Medical Museion. Three staff members — Anni, Camilla and Nanna — participated in a group drawing workshop. The specimen we drew is an example of bones of the middle ear mounted in a magnifying glass and placed on a small wooden plinth. It comes from the Ibsen-Mackesprangske […]

Ilke Kocamaz, a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, has an interesting point on the Material World blog today. Taking Malraux’s notion of the ‘museum without walls’ as her a point of departure, Kocamaz reminds us that the museum as a concept is not dependent on any particular place or time — and then […]

Nanowerk reports that researchers at the Micro and Nanosystems Department, Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona have recently demonstrated that it is possible to produce and place small silicon chips inside living HeLa cells by means of different techniques, like lipofection, phagocytosis or microinjection. 90% of the cells remained alive and healthy for a week. We’re talking about […]

By chance I just found the wonderful exchange below in the Minutes of Evidence of the House of Lords (i.e., the upper house of the British Parliament) Select Committee on Economic Affairs meeting of 14 February. It’s the record of the examination of witnesses on the state of public health research and its importance for […]

Just a reminder about the meeting in Copenhagen 16-18 September — on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in biomedical science and medical technology. How do museums today handle the material and visual heritage of contemporary medical and health science and technology? How do curators wield the increasing amount and kinds of more or […]

Nina has a point — her favourite museums are idiosyncratic. There are lots of “perfectly nice, perfectly forgettable” museums, but those that stick in one’s memory are those with individuality, like the Museum of Jurassic Technology. They are often small, because they are not run by committees, and the staff is passionate about what they are doing. Yet, as Nina […]

I fredags d. 12. marts blev vores lille særudstilling med genstande, der i denne måned er portrætteret i Ud & Se endelig færdig. Sammenlignet med de seneste udstillinger her i huset, er det en ganske lille produktion, men resultatet er vi ganske godt tilfredse med. Vi har nemlig grebet en meget oplagt mulighed for at få […]

Like most museums, Medical Museion is a member of the International  Council of Museums (ICOM). The major benefit of membership is that you don’t have to pay entrance to other member museums (and sometimes are allowed to bypass the queue by getting in through the VIP entrance, which gives a kick of feeling important). But except for this, one doesn’t really get much […]

Som jeg skrev for et par uger siden har Arken lige lavet en lille undersøgelse på temaet ‘Fremtidens museum’. Museerne og den kultur, som de eksisterer i, har ændret sig markant de seneste 20 år. Bevægelsen fra mono- til multikultur, nye undervisningsformer, ændringer i medievaner og forbrugsmønstre samt demokratiseringstendenser, der bringer traditionelle hierarkier og autoriteter […]